


constant

by e11ipses



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, POV Erik, POV Second Person, wherein i analyse their relationship through the mind of one of the characters, yet more depressing works from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 10:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5623450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/e11ipses/pseuds/e11ipses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are few things in your life which are constant. You used to think he wasn't one of them. You used to think that the only thing left for you, the only thing that there had really ever been was hate. From you, for you. You built your castles in it, after all.  It was only ever him that told you different. </p>
<p>Erik reflects on his relationship with Charles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	constant

**Author's Note:**

> I sort of wrote this a while ago but I fixed it up a bit before posting it- it strikes me it is really quite similar to my other thing yeah anyway can you tell which obsession I'm going through at the moment  
> Anyway, thanks for reading, random internet citizens. Enjoy.

“He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.” _  
__― **W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage**_

“All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.”   
_― **Virginia Woolf, Orlando**_

 

One time he says, _I love you, Erik._

Eyes wide and blue and earnest. That smile, the real one, small and private. You look back at him, right in the eye, and your relief and joy and _everything_ colours your expression, and you let him _see_.

_I love you, Charles_ , you tell him, but he's shifting out of focus, changing, disintegrating. You’re awake now, and it's cold, in the dark, it's cold.

-

This is the first lesson you learn, and the fifth, and the fiftieth. Thinking that the good things will last. They dragged you out of your childhood with their hate and harm but you didn't learn. You stole your mother's salvation in a moment of panic and you didn't learn, not even then. On a beach on an island the light was too bright and your eyes burned when you held him and he hated you. You have learned your lesson now, you hope, but it's so hard. It's so hard, and you fall short again and again and again.

-

_Nothing lasts forever,_ says a German scientist, and you're strapped to a table and you have to nod, _yes,_ because that's the only thing you can do.

But that's not what you're thinking. The scientist reaches for a switch. You're thinking: _you're wrong,_ and the screaming has started. _You're wrong. It only means nothing good._

-

You think he knows this, in the back of his mind, in fact, you know he does. Hope taken as truth as he preaches about being _the better person_ and _not sinking to their level_ and _there's always another way,_ it’s just bullshit. He doesn't believe it, not truly, although he may have forgotten by now. You know him better than anyone, better than himself, you were never afraid of admitting your mistakes. It _infuriates_ you, this act he puts on, this _figure_ he's come to be, like he didn’t spend five years a damn junkie _._ Like he didn't try to hide, to deny, to forgot. To absolve himself of the responsibilities of the hope he gave. _Accept yourself,_ well, he didn't, did he? Did he? How about you say it again, why don't you. How about you scream it to the heavens, for all the good it'll do.

-

He asks you once, _how many languages do you speak?_ Maybe that's an odd thing to remember, but you do. His voice is high and his tone incredulous and there is a smile, beautiful in its spontaneity, that you try not to focus on too much. You are sitting across from him, weight on your elbows, elbows on a table in a restaurant somewhere foreign in his world. _A few,_ you say, _six or seven. You know, enough to get me by, nothing fancy_. He laughs, then. Laughed. His eyes are bright and so unburdened, so young. You chuckle a little, yourself. This is happiness, it seems. New. Foreign. And you will later learn, fleeting.

-

It comes up in an argument sometime, although your arguments are never ordinary. Both of you ultimately have a flair for the dramatic. It's been months or more and your finger has finally found the switch to make a difference. He has a hand at your throat and you spit it at him between gasps, biding time and yet not, somehow. _Happiness,_ you say, _It's just ignorance in better clothing._ The hand twitches, just a little, and you are suddenly glad he is only speaking through another mutant's mind. You cannot see his eyes.

-

They used to call the eyes the window to the soul. His eyes are warm and clear, and you don't want to think about yours.

-

On a bench in a park in another city you've forgotten you watch him sit, quiet and dignified. His eyes are turbulent like calm seas disturbed.  In a box in the corner of a magazine's front page are the words: _The Sentinel Solution: what it means for our future._ For the first time in many years he was the one who suggested to meet. You watch and wait for him to say something, eyebrow raised, until it's clear he's not going to.

_I didn't want to be right,_ is what you say, because he needs you to.

_Don't,_ he snaps, and you have never seen him this unsettled. Your hair prickles, a bit, on the back of your neck, and he closes his eyes. _Don't._

-

You do, of course, as you always do. You don't ask for his forgiveness, but he gives it, anyway. The final war comes brought by you and a different kind of evil and he forgives you, eventually. In the sunset of your lives you stand tall and straight at the head of an army and watch him smile _your_ smile, and he forgives you. On the edge of an era your eyes meet and you think, _how ridiculous._ Laughter pools foreign and bubbly in your stomach. Your shoulders shake in an effort to keep it in. _How ridiculous,_ you think, and it's his word, and it's so damn _funny._ Mirth bursts out of you like the gas of a shaken soda, because there’s no point now. _How completely and utterly ridiculous._

-

They did an interview on him, once upon a time, in a land far, far away. They've done it since, obviously, but it's more political and less _real._ In this one he’s younger, different, and yet very much the same. His expression is open, but it’s not the same _open_ you’re used to. This is more careful, more structured, less _real._ This is _after,_ and you have to read it in a crumpled magazine in the best room of a rundown hotel. They ask him the usual things, life as a mutant, how it feels to be a professor so young. Predictable questions with predictable answers. They ask him personal things, too. You smile, a little, when you read his stories. _I wasn’t exactly a model student,_ he says, _I had my fair share of trouble._ You can picture him saying that: _trouble,_ with a little half smile, nudging thoughts away from questions down that path. If you were there you would think of something entirely scandalous he’d once told you and say aloud, _really, Charles, what on earth could you mean?_

There is a curious burning and you blink, hard, until it goes away. Turn your attention to the next question, two or so from last, that reads, _Is there someone special in your life?_

You can picture them asking him, some silly little girl playing reporter framing the words with pink lips, his pause, just bordering on awkward.

His answer. (Careful, resigned). _No._ Another pause. A smile. (Apologetic.) _Not anymore._

-

You have thought about these words a lot, what they mean, both for him and for you. You have come to the decision somewhat ironically that they are too negative. Far too negative, even for you, the _professional pessimist,_ as he once said. _Not anymore_ suggests an end, an absence, a lack of.

You have been many things to him, and he to you, but there has never been a _lack._

-

There are few things in your life which are constant. You used to think he wasn't one of them. You used to think that the only thing left for you, the only thing that there had really ever been was hate. From you, for you. You built your castles in it, after all.  It was only ever him that told you different. _Different, Erik. You can be better. You are,_

-

He almost matches you in this, in the art of pretending, though it was always you who was the better actor. Odd glances and wandering eyes and a sadness, such a deep sadness. You catch, always, in the moment before you look away. He told you truth was uncontainable, and it was, for him. Always discoverable. Always so fixed. He lacked your experience, your moments bottled up like fine wine and left to age, to rot, to fester. Memories distorted by time and your own special kind of bitterness. In your mind a woman smiles and her lips run red while you scream. Warmth bleeds down his forehead from something else you couldn't stop. Truth is fluid, you know, and he is naïve to think any different. But you put on your face like a mask and drain your eyes of all emotion. He is wrong. But you cannot bring yourself to be the one to show him that.

-

There is a particularly annoying _silver_ one you refuse to look at too closely. On the day you part ways he says something, fast, as though for the satisfaction of hearing you _ask_ to repeat it. 

_I_ _said_ , the boy says, drawing it out far too slowly, _that you two…_ And stops. Ahead of you, _he_ is talking to someone else, and though you’re facing each other he looks everywhere but you.

You arch an eyebrow, impatient. Oddly enough, the boy doesn't grin.

_He looks at you like you're the end of his world_ , the boy says, _and you look like you're glad he noticed_.

The boy leaves. _Well,_ you think.

-

Sometimes, when you feel like being gallant, you think: _I am not the right person for him._  You have and are and will always bring him pain. You distance yourself and you tell yourself, _this is bravery, sacrifice._ But you have known sacrifice, and you know this to be untrue. You have never let him go, and you can't, you are two sides of the same coin, so to speak. He the dignified profile and you the event. Try and separate them. You can't. Everything you do affects him, and he you. You will always bring him pain, but so will he. Good thing, then, that you're something of a masochist.

-

In a quiet moment after a long day in a hotel room with far too much orange he asks you.

_Why do you do it? Wouldn't it be better to just..._

He is talking about Shaw. You have come to realise that doesn’t matter.

You have asked yourself this question a thousand times if you have done it once. You look him square in the eye, and he stares right back.

_Because I have to_ , you say, and if he shivers, you do not notice.

 


End file.
